Comments such as these are seriously out of touch with reality.
For me it is actually rather interesting that they went with HTML first, considering that they had the resources to skip on the HTML version completely. And I'm sure that they did this, not because HTML was the fad of the moment, but because HTML has inherent advantages ... like, when Windows Phone 8 gets released, Facebook will be available for it from day 1, just as it is available on any phone that has a web browser.
And of course they had to go native. Developing web apps for mobile phones is extremely painful. For instance the last time I developed something for an iPhone, upload buttons in the browser were disabled. So basically in the name of user experience or whatever the hell reasons Apple is conjuring these days, they deliberately broke the user experience for web apps by not allowing uploads of photos. And considering this is the number 1 use-case for active users of Facebook, they were forced to go native anyway.
The alternative road, which both Facebook and Google took, was to wrap that HTML in an app container that would let them bypass the browser restrictions (like uploading of files). But this was a bad idea, at least because the web view on iOS has much worse performance characteristics than the browser. For Facebook at least it's amazing how they accomplished the feat of making the native app more sluggish than loading facebook.com in the browser (which is perfect btw, except that you can't share photos with it and it also doesn't have any mechanism for giving you notifications in real time, but I don't miss that because that's what email is for).
when Windows Phone 8 gets released, Facebook will be available for it from day 1, just as it is available on any phone that has a web browser.
Not really. Some amount of development effort will be required to ensure compatibility with any given platform browser. Certainly cross-browser compatibility has gotten better in the nearly 20 years of WWW existence, but it is not perfect. And additionally, you'll have to consider various platform issues such as the upload field on <iOS6 you mention. Alternatively, if Facebook were to work on a native Windows Phone 8 app, they'd potentially have it available from day 1. They have the resources and they'd likely have abundant support from Microsoft.
wrap that HTML in an app container that would let them bypass the browser restrictions (like uploading of files). But this was a bad idea, at least because the web view on iOS has much worse performance characteristics than the browser.
And at most because every other top-tier app which went native instead of HTML provided a vastly improved user experience. Facebook and Google web view apps look and behave antiquated in comparison. Not exactly putting your best foot forward. Google has moved faster, where the G+ app is now native on iOS, providing (perhaps) an improved user experience (at least a valiant effort at one, anyway).
I can't speak for everyone, but exactly how long are we supposed to wait for HTML to become a write-once environment that enables as-good-as native apps? We've had nearly 20 years to address those two issues on the desktop and still both issues exist. I just don't see that ever happening. And users will notice.
For me it is actually rather interesting that they went with HTML first, considering that they had the resources to skip on the HTML version completely. And I'm sure that they did this, not because HTML was the fad of the moment, but because HTML has inherent advantages ... like, when Windows Phone 8 gets released, Facebook will be available for it from day 1, just as it is available on any phone that has a web browser.
And of course they had to go native. Developing web apps for mobile phones is extremely painful. For instance the last time I developed something for an iPhone, upload buttons in the browser were disabled. So basically in the name of user experience or whatever the hell reasons Apple is conjuring these days, they deliberately broke the user experience for web apps by not allowing uploads of photos. And considering this is the number 1 use-case for active users of Facebook, they were forced to go native anyway.
The alternative road, which both Facebook and Google took, was to wrap that HTML in an app container that would let them bypass the browser restrictions (like uploading of files). But this was a bad idea, at least because the web view on iOS has much worse performance characteristics than the browser. For Facebook at least it's amazing how they accomplished the feat of making the native app more sluggish than loading facebook.com in the browser (which is perfect btw, except that you can't share photos with it and it also doesn't have any mechanism for giving you notifications in real time, but I don't miss that because that's what email is for).